G.I. Joel

The stain emerged from his armpit and widened like a mouth. A dark-red scream soaking through the grubby polo shirt he’d been given as an early birthday present. He would have turned twelve the next day.

‘He always liked to look smart,’ his sister would later tell the reporter. The blow from the gunshot threw him backwards, pushing him onto the edge of a water tank. He stayed like that perched on the edge of the cistern, his back propped against the wall, somewhere between sitting and lying, sprawled across somebody else’s yard. Half crooked, half boy, half prey; some kind of trophy.

With his left arm raised above his head against the wall and his mouth slightly open, he looked as though he was waving to someone or celebrating a goal. His right arm, the one with a bullet hole punched through the armpit, dangled at his side. A nine-millimetre pistol slipped from his hand and fell into the water after the shot cut short his escape. The mouth beneath his arm now gaped wide, screaming itself hoarse into the brilliant orange-blue sky above the Marvellous City.

The boy’s head, turned to the side, could well have been taking in the view which, from up there on the hill, was ‘proper luxury,’ as he used to say. But his eyes, frozen open, no longer cared much for sentiment. Soon, a thick red stream would begin dripping from the arm that hung there as though it belonged to somebody else, splatter onto the concrete floor of a neighbour he’d never met, run down into her cistern, and she’d be seriously pissed off about the contaminated water.

Grace, prostitute, sculpted body, a face marred by years of drug abuse, still quite beautiful though. With too many teeth missing, she avoided smiling. Over time, her face settled into a permanent stern look. She was getting to the end of another day’s work, meaning she was out on the street. Looking at her, nobody would’ve guessed that such a beautiful body housed a mind so damaged. The cognitive damage was the result of bacterial meningitis that had never been properly treated when she was a child. And the drugs. Grace had serious memory problems. She was half blind and practically deaf in one ear. Which was probably why she didn’t recognize her own house on the television screen in the café where she was eating a ham & cheese toastie and drinking a Coke.

‘Jesus, that’s shocking, how can a mother let her son play outside knowing what it’s like around here? What kind of mother does that? And you’ve got all these people there protesting. Can you believe it? Too late. They should’ve looked after the boy better!’

 ‘Looks like the boy didn’t have a mother,’ says the waiter.

‘Doesn’t matter, somebody should’ve been looking after him! This is a community! You can’t just let kids run around outside, full stop! This is what happens!’

‘But if they can’t play outside, where else are they supposed to play?’

‘Course I feel sorry for the boy. But the mother? That makes me angry!’

‘I just told you, he didn’t have a mother!’ insists the waiter.

‘Then it makes me even angrier!’ Grace snaps, putting an end to the discussion.

The waiter turns the volume up.

‘Born to a construction worker and a domestic cleaner, the boy had to get used to loss from an early age. His mother died of a stroke at the age of 39, he was raised by his father.’

‘See? That’s what I’m saying, he had a father, so where was the father? I bet he was down at the bar drinking!’

‘He also had two sisters and a brother, arrested in December, at the age of seventeen, allegedly appearing in a video firing at police officers.’

‘It’s a bloody disgrace! With a brother and sisters, and instead of looking after the kid they drag him into all that. That’s why I always say: poor people shouldn’t have children! I don’t have any! I’ve had seven abortions. Seven. And I don’t regret a single one. People should know what they can and can’t do, they should stay in their lane. It should be banned!’

‘Shhh!’ The waiter blurts out before he could stop himself.

‘Sir, are you a witness? Did you see what happened?’

‘The boy died instantly. Not a cry, not a sigh.’

‘Did you know the victim?’

‘Hang on a minute. I think I recognise this place…’

The red river flowed down his right arm, breaking into thin rivulets that branched in every direction. From his open hand, a tributary followed along his little finger, dripping into the water, plong, plong, plong. Two more streams ran through the palm, speckling the ground with tiny red dots that multiplied in silence. Soon, there would be a small red puddle. Then a stain that would be difficult to remove. The owner of the house would be even more pissed off.

‘Not even the sound of the pistol falling into the cistern would he have heard. Death was instantaneous.’

In fact, he hadn’t. Long before he landed there in the stranger’s yard, Joel’s eardrums had already been perforated by gunfire. The police bullets and the shots fired by his own hand. Because Joel fired too. Something everybody later denied vehemently, following the instructions of the man who ran the favela.

‘We are here with the victim’s cousin. The girl is extremely distressed.

‘He always used to say how much he missed having a mother—’

‘There you go! Now she’s crying! These people love putting on a big show! If only they’d looked after the boy properly….’ Grace squinted at the screen. ‘But I know this place….’

The waiter shakes his head in disbelief. ‘Let’s hear what the police have to say. Look, it’s the police officer.’

‘When monitoring communications over the gang radio network, officers found it easy to identify his voice, high-pitched, a child’s voice.’

It was the first time he’d ever fired a gun for real. He’d wanted to for ages, but they never let him. ‘You’re still a kid,’ they used to tell him. Besides, they needed to save ammunition. Not anymore. Pow! Pow! Pow! What a brilliant weapon! Better than the movies, way better than Tela Quente, his favourite Monday-night movie programme.

Grace had been out on the streets for two days. Last night hadn’t been easy. She’d picked up a vicious bastard who put her through all kinds of filth. She was exhausted. Raw. Sore. Chafed all over. Anyone else in her place would’ve cried. That woman from television certainly would have. But Grace wasn’t about to give in, no way. She had to be strong. So, she decides she was simply tired and hungry. She takes a huge bite of her toastie and orders another Coke.

Joel was always hungry too. He ate compulsively. Ever since he was little. Ever since his mother died. At twelve, he was already a mountain of fat, with a huge belly now spilling out from under his shirt. Huge, soft, scratched all over and smeared with blood. His weight had caused him no end of trouble, ‘Barrel Joel, Barrel Joel!’ the kids at school would shout, chasing him around. Eventually he stopped going, just disappeared from the school. But he could never stick to a diet. The hunger was stronger than he was. Uncontrollable, his hunger. And there was the happiness, the sheer happiness of eating. His favourite thing? A bauru. As soon as he got out of there, he’d have one. With a Coke.

But that place on television, Grace thinks. She recognizes it….She pulls her chair closer to the screen. Then, not without a certain pride, she finally realizes it was her cistern, her yard.

‘Bloody hell, that’s my house!’ She leans forward. ‘I don’t believe it! My house on television!’ She grins. ‘Good thing I put the potted plants outside, makes for a much nicer picture, don’t you think?’

The waiter arrives with the Coke, speechless.

‘We managed to locate the boy’s father. Sir, would you like to say a few words?’

‘All these people who are here today were supposed to celebrate his birthday tomorrow. I’ve already bought his present. Instead, my son will be getting a shovel of earth…’

‘But I’ve never seen that boy before. What was he doing in my yard?’ She sits up straight.

‘What the fuck is this? I’m reporting him to the police! For fuck’s sake! This is going to get me in trouble! I’m going over there. Please put the toastie and the Cokes on the tab. For fuck’s sake, you can’t even work in peace. Why don’t these mothers take care of their children? Fuck! Bye!’

The waiter watches the woman hurry away, dumbfounded. He shakes his head, sighs. Then he clears the table, pushes the chair back into place and turns the volume down. He goes back behind the counter and sits on a high stool. Resting his chin on his right hand, he watches the movement on the street, lost in thought.

Yes, a giant bauru with a bottle of Coke, that was what Joel was thinking about as he ran down the hill, firing. Wow! He was shooting for real! Burning all the ammunition!

He discovered a blind courage at the bottom of his fear. He ran faster, dropped low and then launched himself towards the wall of that empty, unfamiliar yard. He could hide there, behind the cistern. Perfect. He threw himself into the air. Jesus! Just like in the movies! In the middle of the jump, he suddenly remembered that it was Monday and Tela Quente was on. He’d already seen the trailer online. The film opened with a chase, people running through the streets of New York, mothers clutching children and hiding behind walls—just like him there, elite troops dropping into the middle of Manhattan, gunfire, heads exploding, brains flying everywhere, fire, a building collapsing, a bomb falling on the White House, Bruce Willis, G.I. Joe.

All of it flashed through his mind in the middle of the jump. Just before he felt a sharp pain and a burning sensation in his right armpit. He felt the pistol slip from his hand, his head struck something hard and the world went dark. Too bad, I’m gonna miss the movie, he thought.